Courageous, heartbreaking, infuriating, and ultimately victorious; a significant contribution to the cycle-of-abuse...
A debut memoir details generations of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse that ultimately tears a dysfunctional family apart.
Stein’s grandfather was a nasty alcoholic who raped at least one of his own daughters. Gigi, the author’s mother, was 13 years old when her own mom walked out on the family, leaving her five daughters to fend for themselves against their abusive father. Gigi quickly took up with an older man, Marco Rossi, becoming pregnant at 15. It was a devastating blow to her when her little boy died from a heart defect at 3. She and Marco went on to have three more children before they finally broke up. Next came Henry McCardle. Henry bought a house for Gigi and her young children and added two kids of his own to the household. He and Gigi had three more. Both Marco and Henry were womanizers and heavy drinkers. Marco was a violent drunk and Henry was a sexual predator. While Henry was away on “business trips,” Gigi hit the local bars. It was within this amalgam of siblings, half siblings, and absentee parents that Stein was raised. By the age of 7, the author writes, “I already knew that I had two mothers—a good, comforting one whom I loved, and a mean, foul-mouthed drunk who could withdraw that love without warning.” The eye-opening narrative by Stein (writing under a pseudonym) is riveting. Describing the family code of secrecy and denial, she asserts: “Our family was one in which silences about deeply troubling matters were normal, and indeed required.” Some of the darker family secrets are kept closeted for a major portion of the jaw-dropping memoir. One of these concerns Henry and Gigi’s children and is likely to cause readers confusion. It is a disconcerting absence of information, but it gives readers a sense of the turmoil the author experienced for many decades.
Courageous, heartbreaking, infuriating, and ultimately victorious; a significant contribution to the cycle-of-abuse literature.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64293-118-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bombardier Books
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A well-grounded examination of the stresses faced by American children today, and some practical solutions to reduce these stresses. Weissbourd, special adviser on family issues to Vice President Al Gore, outlines the negative effects of divorce, parental stress, and relocation on American children. Although the national debate has focused on children from poor, single-parent homes, Weissbourd convincingly argues that parental stress ``often more powerfully influences a child's fate than whether there are two parents in a home or whether a family is poor.'' Living in a ghetto does not preclude a healthy home environment. Weissbourd is intent on shattering other myths as well. Among the nation's poorest children, there are far more whites than African-Americans. Severely troubled childhoods do not doom us, the author also notes. In fact, they often generate effective coping skills that can be brought into adulthood. And while parents may believe that they have little influence over their teenagers, studies show that teens ``trust the counsel of their parents more than that of their peers in making key decisions about the future and that teenagers are powerfully affected by their parents' values.'' Weissbourd targets mobility as a primary cause of stress in young people's lives. Children who move often lose the constancy needed to thrive. To reduce the impact of these upheavals, he suggests that cities and schools help mediate tenant/landlord disputes. Another key is early identification and treatment of at-risk children, with services geared to help the entire family. Documenting programs and schools that have worked, Weissbourd poses viable solutions that have proven effective with our most vulnerable children. Provocative and timely, this analysis offers a fresh voice of hope for America's troubled youth.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-201-48395-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
Interpretations of women's life histories support the hypothesis that the road through adulthood is a series of developmental construction zones, relieved only rarely by a measured mile of achievement-related superhighway. The early work of Yale psychologist Daniel J. Levinson fell in the shadow of Gail Sheehy's 1970s bestseller, Passages, which drew on research for Levinson's respected (but not bestselling) study of adult male psychological development (The Seasons of a Man's Life, 1978). Nearly two decades later, this new volume, polished and edited by wife Judy after Levinson's death in 1994, offers a map of women's adult development. (Judy Levinson also deserves much of the credit for analyzing the many interviews and identifying life stages.) Levinson's primary subjects were 45 housewives, corporate achievers, and academics, ages 35 to 45, from whose lives he teased patterns of development. In the approximately 40 years from the end of adolescence to the final phase of middle adulthood, Levinson identifies eight periods, beginning with the transition from adolescence to early adulthood and proceeding through building an early life structure (comprising choices about marriage and family, occupation, separation from parents, and lifestyle), a mid-era transition involving reappraisal, and a culminating life structure, which allows breathing space to enjoy one's new status before moving on to the next transition. The Levinsons extrapolate to later life stages, which are said to follow the same pattern. Levinson somewhat naively expresses his surprise at ``the extent and power of the differences'' between men and women, which he attributes to society's splitting of gender roles, although he does predict a slow and lengthy evolution toward ``gender equality.'' Probably too little too late, but read it for the stimulating early and ending chapters, which argue convincingly that the tumultuous eras marking the decades from 20 to 50 are part of a struggle to maturity that men and women share. (First printing of 30,000)
Pub Date: Jan. 26, 1996
ISBN: 0-394-53235-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
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